Political Quotes

“I want to eliminate crop insurance for tobacco. I will concede to my colleague that the overall subsidy for crop insurance, as I said at the outset, is an issue well worth addressing. The fact that we would spend--perhaps the Senator from Mississippi has more current figures--we would spend in the neighborhood of $200 million subsidizing crop insurance in America is an issue which I will happily join with my colleague from Kentucky and other States to address. But lest we forget, this debate started on the issue of tobacco, and although many of my colleagues want to raise a variety of other issues, we still have to face the reality that when this debate is over, we are going to face this question time and again when we go home: Senator, what's going on here? I can't pick up a newspaper, a news magazine, turn on the radio or television and I am not being told how bad tobacco is for America. Why do you keep plowing millions of my tax dollars into the subsidy of this tobacco crop? How can you justify it? I cannot. That is why I am offering the amendment. And I would say to my colleagues from the tobacco producing States, it is time to accept reality. And reality will tell you this. The day when the Federal Government rushed to the rescue of tobacco is over. I do not know if I will succeed with this amendment today, but tobacco's days in the U.S. Department of Agriculture are numbered. They know it, the tobacco farmers know it, and the tobacco companies know it.”